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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Delicate omens traced on air
To the lone bard true witness bare;
Birds with auguries on their wings
Chanted undecieving things
Him to beckon, him to warn;
Well might then the poet scorn
To learn of scribe or corier
Hints writ in vaster character;
And on his mind, at dawn of day,
Soft shadows of the evening lay
For the prevision is allied
Until the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.